The Normandy Invasion, or Operation Overlord, as it was called, began at 12:15 a.m. on June 6, 1944, when more than 13,000 Americans from the 82nd and 101st Airborne divisions began to parachute behind German lines.

  Imagine thousands of sand crabs trying to make it to shore.

  But many of those noble men fighting for freedom, alas, did not.

   About three hours later, allied bombers began to hit the German lines near the 50-mile strip along the Normandy coast of France. 

    The valor displayed on those Normandy beaches is what forced Germany to surrender a year later.  

My father fought in WWII, though he wasn’t present on D-Day. At least not that I know of since he never spoke of those four years. Instead, like many others, just quietly drank himself to death.

    Wasn’t until I read books by the historian Lynne Olson did I truly understand my father…what he must have gone through. The horrors he must have seen.

    This brings me to Theodore Roosevelt Jr., Teddy’s eldest son.

    Ted Jr. was the only Officer who charged Normandy with nothing but a cane and a handgun…the cane the result of old wounds from WWI. He also had a heart condition he kept from his doctors.

    At 56, President Theodore Roosevelt’s namesake was the oldest soldier to participate, and the highest-ranking American to make it all the way to shore.

  It’s a pity his dad dying in 1919, wasn’t there to see it, since he would have been so proud.

 But I don’t wish to make this about Teddy.

 Ted on July 12, a month after D-Day, died of a heart attack in Méautis, France.

 The writer, John Howell, sent me the two white crosses at Normandy American Cemetery in Colleville sur-Mar, France commemorating Ted and his kid brother Quentin who at 20, died during WWI.   

In 1955, 37 years later, Edith  Roosevelt had her youngest son moved to lie next to his big brother Ted, who he always looked up to, now for all eternity. Hard not to be moved by that.

  Lest We Forget!

   SB